Hasta La Gadget!

I should have known what I was in for when I asked you to come up with disgusting processed foods for this week’s Photoshop Contest. But man, you guys are even grosser than I thought.

You’re going to want to avoid everything below if you’re eating right now. You’ve been warned.

First Place — Cobra Commander
Second Place — Ann Dougherty
Third Place — Donald Hanson

In October, NASA discovered the universe was sliding inexplicably toward, well, something massive. They called the phenomenon “dark flow,” and it’s but one example of the creepy, unexplained awesomeness that awaits humanity in space.

Dark Flow. Or, The Universe’s Great Cosmic Tease
Like some kind of massive cosmic toilet bowl, the multitude of galaxies that populate the known Universe are swirling inexplicably toward a tiny 20-degree plane of deep space. At least, that’s what astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky discovered in an incredibly controversial paper published in October 2008. Put simply for we laypeople, the paper suggests that way out in the cosmos—beyond Tatooine and idiotic Ewoks and Caprica Six’s curves—lay a chunk of matter so beyond our understanding that it is actually pulling the observable universe toward it at 600km/s.

But in that term “observable universe” lies the rub. We can’t (and never will) “see” what this mass of theorized matter looks like. Which is too bad, because the dark flow theory hints that this mass, or super structure, could be anything from another universe to a realm of whimsical fancy whose physics, forces and warped space-time are completely beyond any of us. Unicorns, flying cars, cats and dogs living in harmony, you name it and it could be true, as we’ll never, ever make it there to find out first hand.

And even though this whole “observable universe” buzz kill means one of the greatest discoveries ever will never be observed by humanity’s naked eye, it doesn’t mean scientists are deterred from theorizing the hell out of what lies just beyond the cosmic horizon. Indeed, Kashlinsky intends to continue to research the phenomenon using data from the five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project. Launched in June 2001, WMAP has been a “stunningly successful” program, responsible for producing a new Standard Model of Cosmology, says NASA. (Ed. Note: WMAP’s top ten discoveries are on display over at NASA –j.l.)

The WOW! Signal. Or, Holy Crap, Alien Avon Calling!
Before Jodie Foster implored humanity to send poets to document the denizens of Vega, there was a real-life signal from the heavens that has, to date, remained one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that we are not alone.

Called the WOW! signal, this 72-second beacon was detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977. Because the unknown signal fit the parameters of what an artificial space signal might sound like so exactly, the awestruck Ehman jotted down “Wow!” when he first heard it. I’d also like to think he cartoonishly fell back in his chair and spit coffee out all over the terminal when it happened too, but that’s just me.

One of the biggest pieces of evidence supporting the theory that Wow! was extraterrestrial in origin—and not some random signal from Earth that bounced off a satellite—was the 72-second duration. As was the case in Contact, with its 18 hours of recorded static, more can be read in the length of the transmission than within the signal itself. In fact, in a paper published on the 20th anniversary of WOW!, Ehman explored additional theories and speculation regarding signal length:

There is still another factor to consider. The signal could actually have been present for years (or millennia, for that matter) prior to its detection for the following reason. Just before the data acquisition and analysis (i.e., the “run”) began, the declination of the telescope was changed. In the days (and years) previous to August 15, 1977 the radio telescope was not pointed at the declination where Wow! was seen; thus, we couldn’t have detected that signal. I should note that during the Ohio Sky Survey many years earlier, we did survey the same declination we did when the Wow! signal was discovered. However, we were using a wideband receiver (8 MHz bandwidth). A narrowband signal averaged over a wide bandwidth would be reduced in intensity so much that it would have been buried in the noise. Thus, even if Wow! were present then, we wouldn’t have seen it.”

So, was it aliens? If we get off this rock and jet off into the stars, will we one day find the source of this mysterious signal? Who knows, as subsequent attempts made over the past 20 years to locate the Wow! signal, or another one like it, have failed. Even when more powerful systems were implemented, like the Hollywood-friendly Very Large Array in New Mexico, the results were all the same: Utter silence.

If you’ll yourself a bit of wishful thinking, however, the idea that this was some kind of powerful last-ditch burst of radiation from a dying alien race is not implausible. As detailed by author and astronomer David Darling, the Wow! signal could have been generated by an alien civilization with access to a transmitting dish like our Arecibo radio telescope. They’d also need a 2.2-gigawatt transmitter—extremely powerful, but plausible for humans (and definitely plausible if your race is, say, facing extinction).

NASA’s Mystery BOOM! Or Something In Space Is Screaming
Contrary to what the original Alien movie poster might have lead you to believe, somewhere in the universe, something is screaming—and we can “hear” it.

In the words of Alan Kogut from the Goddard Space Center, “The universe really threw us a curve. Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming ‘noise’ six times louder than anyone had predicted.”

Of course, there is no sound in space. What NASA’s ARCADE system received was actually deafening cosmic radio background, and the source is completely unknown at this time. Normally radio telescopes pick up electromagnetic chatter in the 10 MHz and 100 GHz, coming from what are known as “radio galaxies.” But according to our existing models and theories, the signal shouldn’t exist, as there are “not enough radio galaxies to account for the signal.”

As detailed by Jesus when this story initially broke earlier this year, NASA said that to create this signal, “you’d have to pack [radio galaxies] into the universe like sardines. There wouldn’t be any space left between one galaxy and the next.” That’s obviously not the case.

The discovery, while amazing, also carries with it a substantial negative. Remember all that cool stuff about dark flow and the edge of the universe from earlier? Well, the BOOM complicates our efforts to detect it more accurately.

Hubble Spies UFO. Or… Yeah, This One Really Was a Legitimate UFO
Stories like these confirm to me that we need to keep Hubble and similar programs going as long as humanly possible.

On February 21, 2006 (the paper was only published recently), the venerable space telescope spied a UFO in an area of space where there should have been nothing at all.

Stranger still, the object disappeared almost as mysteriously as it arrived, about 100 days after the initial observation. It got very bright over time, to the 21st magnitude, then faded just as fast. Kind of like an explosion… Not much else is known about the celestial phenomenon, and it hasn’t reappeared since 2006.

The one other certainty? It wasn’t dust, so there go all your jokes.

The Sloan Great Wall: There Is Nothing Bigger

Until we figure out what that huge thing tugging on the pant leg of the universe is, the freakishly huge Sloan Great Wall is the largest structure known to mankind.

It is a behemoth wall of galaxies, otherwise known as a galactic filament, that stretches 1.37 billion light years from end to end. The filament was discovered only recently, on October 20, 2003, by the Princeton University duo J. Richard Gott III and Mario Jurić. Its immense, unimaginable bulk lies an equally unimaginable one billion light years from Earth.

It’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around such distance, so we’ll take things down an exponential notch or two and compare the Great Sloan Wall to something we might eventually (fingers crossed) map out in a few thousand years: The Milky Way.

Our galaxy is actually considered large in the scheme of things. Various estimates say it’s about 100,000 light-years from end-to-end, and about 1,000 light-years thick in the center (where there lay a massive black hole). So, 1.37 billion versus 100,000. I’d say it’s like David and Goliath, but that’d be woefully inaccurate. This Goliath would be incapable of even knowing about our insignificant little existence. Our “large” galaxy is more like a cell in the human body in this case—dutifully performing its mundane, insignificant work while the host moves obliviously on through eternity.

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before. Or, My Closing.
Now, admittedly, these interstellar objects and phenomena are a bit beyond both our reach and our comprehension, and I highly doubt we’ll ever encounter any of them firsthand on our wild journey Off This Rock anytime soon. But you’ll never hear me say “never” when it comes to space travel, even if you just did. This list, if anything, is a heads-up for us all as we (or our robots) journey into deep space.

Watch your ass out in the ether, people, because it’s a frakking freak show up there.

AMD, the other chip company, is 40 years old today. It’s the scrappy underdog to the Intel juggernaut. Today, it’s not in great shape, but at one point, it was actually beating Intel on innovation.

• AMD tried to kill the megahertz myth before Intel. During the Pentium 4 days Intel kept pushing clock speeds higher and higher, before it hit a wall and abandoned the Prescott architecture. The message was clearly, “more megahertz is more better.” AMD’s competing Athlon XP chips, while clocked slower, often beat their Pentium 4 rivals. Ironically, AMD was the first to 1GHz, as some commenters have pointed out (don’t know how I forgot that). Obviously though, AMD’s performance lead didn’t last forever.

• AMD beat Intel to 64-bit in mainstream computers. And we’re not just talking about its Opteron and Athlon 64 processors. AMD actually designed the X86-64 specification, which Intel wound up adopting and licensing—so AMD’s spec is used Intel’s 64-bit processors to this day.

• AMD was first to consider energy efficiency in processor designs. Okay, this is kind of an extension of point number one, but during Intel’s Pentium 4 ‘roid rage period AMD’s processors consistently used less power than Intel’s. Intel’s performance per watt revelation didn’t really start until the Pentium M (which was actually a throwback to the P6 architecture), which set the tone for Intel’s new direction in its successor, the Core line of chips.

• AMD beat Intel to having an integrated memory controller. A tech feature AMD lorded over Intel for years: AMD’s processors started integrating the memory controller with its processors years ago, reducing memory latency. Intel’s first chip to use an integrated memory controller is the Core i7—before, the memory controller was separate from the processor. (Here’s why Intel says they held off.)

Athlon XP and Athlon 64—those were the good old days, AMD’s cutthroat competitive days. The days they were ahead of Intel. I miss them—at one point, every hand-built computer in my house ran AMD processors. I felt like a rebel—a rebel with faster, cheaper computers.

Unfortunately, I don’t run AMD chips anymore. Intel came back, and came back hard. But here’s hoping for another resurgence, and another 40 years, guys. Share your favorite AMD memories in the comments.

Nikon and Canon—eternally locked in battle—do each other good by keeping product quality neck and neck. But in the newest entry-level DSLR shootout, if there has to be a winner, it’s Canon’s Rebel T1i.

I’m not trying to be all namby pamby, like “Oh, you’re each so special in your own ways, it’s so hard to choose!” but I can’t stress enough how solid both the Nikon D5000 and the Canon Rebel T1i are. For the price—$850 for the D5000, $900 for the T1i, both including beginner-level 18-55mm lenses—either one will work fine, whether you’re a beginner looking to learn about photography, or a veteran with investment in a few lenses but not enough cash for a step-up Nikon D90 or D700, or a Canon 5D Mark II. (I highlighted their spec differences here.)

In fact, the differences between the D5000 and the T1i tend to be more about button layout and interface design than picture-taking ability. If you basically know what you’re doing, you can take essentially the same picture with either camera, except in certain situations mentioned below.

Handling

Like I said, there are differences in interface. Unlike fancier DSLRs, both have single dials on the right-hand side, and both have just one large full-color LCD screen for managing settings, setting up shots and reviewing them later. The Canon’s is a little bigger with a lot more resolution, which makes a big benefit when you’re shooting video or focusing in Live View, but is otherwise irrelevant.

In interface design, however, the better design goes to Nikon. As you can see below, the organization of information on the screen is much more palatable and less arbitrary. Nikon users who are used to having the second LCD screen up top for basic info—plus specialized buttons—can quickly learn a new behavior, getting all information on the big LCD, using the “i” info button for making most quick setting tweaks.

The Canon interface is similar to previous Rebels, and is pretty durn fugly, and the extra buttons only help in some cases where they are clearly labeled. (And even when the buttons are clearly labeled, there are some hidden functions—hitting the ISO button while shooting video will lock the auto exposure, for instance.)

Automatic Modes

I tested each camera both in full-manual mode and on some of the automatic modes. I’ve heard from a lot of uppity photographers who don’t like people discussing auto shooting, perhaps as a way of trumpeting their own apparently stellar knowledge of the workings of photography. But it’s important to remember that these sub-$1000 cameras are aimed at untrained entry-level shooters, and many of those people tell me that they almost always leave it in auto.

In this case, Nikon has six auto modes, plus a SCENE setting with like 14 different options, in each case including a photo. The Canon is shy on this point, with just five presets. The scene modes are helpful to newbies who can’t translate what they see into camera settings. Still, anyone who buys a camera like this should do so with the intent to learn manual settings, and may benefit more from just taking 100 shots in each setting, like I do, changing settings all along.

What I did find is that even in semi-automatic modes, the Canon and Nikon were more different than better. For instance, when I set the White Balance on Cloudy, both got the white more or less right, but the Canon tended to look more pink, while the Nikon was more green, as you can see:

ISO Noise

Everybody bitches about how more megapixels don’t matter and that optics determine picture quality more than anything, and they’re right. But sensors still matter, especially when shooting in low light—which you do by jacking up the ISO. As you can see below, while both cameras handle relatively noise-free shooting at ISO 800, they both start to get noisy by 1600, and at 3200 they are both noisier still. But the Canon is less noisy in this case.

It stands to point out that I shot this with both cameras on the default “normal” aka “basic” noise-reduction settings. Both cameras let you jack up noise reduction more, or take it off entirely, but in each case, you probably have to consult the manual to learn how, hence me testing on the default settings.

Live View

Live View was last year’s ace in the hole, something first championed by Sony and Olympus, which Canon then took and ran with, followed, only recently, by Nikon. Now everybody’s got it, and it’s okay, but it’s not great, and it’s certainly not the preferred shooting mode for either of these cameras.

The problem is, when you have a live picture on your LCD, the typical auto-focus mechanism doesn’t work, because the mirror inside the camera is lifted up, exposing the optical sensor.

Canon and Nikon have different ways of handling this. Canon says “screw it” and drops the mirror for a split second, letting the camera use its normal AF sensor and getting a nice tight focus.

The Nikon, from what I’ve seen in my testing, can’t do this. Instead it uses secondary auto-focus techniques that are annoyingly slow. The fact that the Nikon has a flip-out “vari-angle” LCD to make Live View more useful is actually silly—by having to wait for the damn thing to autofocus, and by not guaranteeing as good an autofocus, you lose any advantage you’d have by watching this happening in the LCD. I think the mirror-drop technique used by Canon and the vari-angle LCD would be a good combination, however, and my guess is, Nikon is exploring this even now.

Video

This year’s killer upgrade is video, specifically, high-definition video. The Nikon D5000 has 720p at 24 frames per second; Canon’s T1i shoots 1080p at up to 20fps. The question is, will you use it?

I said it before and I’ll say it again: Shooting higher-res video with larger sensors and big honkin’ lenses is awesome. They wide-aspect shots have a cinematic quality, and make better use of light in the room for a more natural feel.

BUT—yes, big ole “but”—the fact that autofocus is pretty borked when you’re shooting videos means you get naturally lit cinematically scoped blurry videos, unless you and your subject remain perfectly still.

Like with standard Live View, Nikon and Canon take different approaches. Nikon says “no AF during shooting whatsoever,” meaning you focus first, then hit record, then, if you have to, start manually refocusing as your toddler, cat or ginormous model rocket starts to make its move. Having lived with the D90 for a while, I want to say I got good at manually focusing, but I did not.

As is the case with Canon’s 5D Mark II, the T1i does let you autofocus during shooting, but it’s not the nice instant refocus you get while shooting stills. It’s the wiggy servo-noisy zoom-zoom-zoom-zoom kind of contrast-based AF that takes too long. So while you’re shooting, you not only see the auto re-focusing in action, but you hear it too.

While Canon’s noisy AF is by far the better option of the two for shooting videos, Canon does something in the T1i that might piss off serious photographers: It disables shutter, aperture and ISO controls for video shooting. It’s full auto, unlike the Nikon D5000, which, like the D90, gives you a certain degree of camera control while shooting video. While the Nikon lets you choose your ISO for instance, the Canon actually varies ISO settings along with auto exposure every time your video’s lighting changes dramatically. I personally don’t miss it—and in my experience, Canon does a slightly better job of getting automatic settings like WB right, and is a more trustworthy camcorder maker in general—but you might miss the control.

One overlooked benefit to the Canon is that you can take still shots while shooting video, without interrupting the video itself. You just get a momentary freezeframe, and the recording continues. On the Nikon, when you shoot video, you can take a still pic, but the video recording stops when you do.

In the End

So, why did I pick the Canon by a nose? Mainly the video and the better Live View focus technique, as well as the slightly better high-ISO performance. When I chatted with NYT’s David Pogue about his rave review of Panasonic’s Lumix GH1—a far better camcorder than either of these because of its quiet lens and full-fledged autofocus—he told me that this kind of half-baked AF makes the video on these cameras a mere “parlor stunt.” I reprint his comment because I agree with him for the most part.

Still, as someone who enjoyed the Nikon D90 video mode, half-baked as it is, I look forward to extended testing of the T1i, shooting video whenever I can. Because in the YouTube era, we’re not looking to go remake Dr. Zhivago. I for one just want something to record a quick vid of my kid doing something hilarious (which her mom won’t let me post on Giz). What I find is that the best video camera is the one built into the still camera I already use. And that’s why, parlor stunt or not, DSLR video is going to be important from here on out. Here’s hoping both Nikon and Canon keep working to make them better.

In Summary

Nikon D5000

Great all-around entry-level DSLR camera

Well-designed user interface; more friendly to beginner photographers

Vari-angle LCD rendered less effective by slow auto-focus in Live View

Can’t autofocus during video shooting

High ISO settings have more noise

Canon T1i

Great all-around entry-level DSLR camera

Live View autofocus technique is fast and effective, and you can also auto-focus while shooting video

Less noise at high ISO, better automatic-shooting results

Interface can be confusing to new photographers

Autofocus in video mode is noisy (as in “audibly annoying”) and slow, so it’s a better perk than the Nikon but not a hands-down win

Product Pages:

Nikon D5000

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Both Panasonic and Canon announced their first water- and shock-proof compact toughcams earlier this year, and we’ve taken them underwater for a test. Which is better for capturing your summertime antics both wet AND wild?

Let me say first that I did not use either of these cameras in their ideal conditions—namely, outside, underwater while swimming. For some reason, Canon and Panasonic did not tailor the release dates of these cameras to coincide with my trip to Egypt a few months ago, which is where I wanted to test them out (why not guys??). Back here in New York, any outdoor body of water is way too frigid right now, and there’s something pretty creepy and ultimately unacceptable about taking an underwater camera to the YMCA for test shots. So, instead of the verdant coral reefs of the Red Sea off the Sinai coast, which were straight out of Planet Earth, our test shots are of me playing with a Kraken Attackin’ Lego Pirates playset in my kitchen sink. Which is a cool playset, but, you know, not the same.

But still, we’ve gathered enough data I think to inform your decision, if you’re thinking of picking up a waterproof toughcam for this summer. Here are the main points of differentiation I see:

Form Factor/Interface
Both cameras are waterproof, but the Canon D10 is protected up to 10 meters (around 32 feet), where the Panasonic TS1 is only protected up to three meters (around 10 feet). And that’s immediately apparent in their shapes:

The D10 looks like it was designed by Ringo on the set of Yellow Submarine—its bulbous shell and porthole-like screws drive home the fact that this baby is going underwater. But on land, it’ll be tough to fit it into a pants pocket without some serious bulging.

It does have some nice, easy-to-press buttons for changing into video mode, for instance, and the icons on the LCD screen are nice and big, easily spotted through a snorkeling mask. There are some superfluous button presses to lock in settings which could be tedious underwater, but the UI is not horrible, and you’ll easily get used to it. The D10 also has come big screw-mounts on each corner for mounting various underwater grips and other accessories that you can buy from Canon.

The TS1 takes a totally different approach, with a sleek rectangular slab shape that at first glance is hard to distinguish from regular non-tough weeniecams. The buttons are a bit smaller, but not prohibitively so, and shootings modes are selected with a thumb dial instead of dedicated buttons—I didn’t see anything I couldn’t operate with a bit of practice while snorkeling. A basic locking wrist-strap comes in the box.

The important thing is that the TS1 is not at all out of place in non-toughcam situations, where the D10 may be. But if you’re a deep snorkeler, three meters may not be enough for you compared to the D10’s 10 meters (I imagine if you’re a serious SCUBA diver, you’ll need something beefier than either of these), but where you lose usability under water with the TS1 you will gain it on land. Consider that.

Video
Another big difference, if not the biggest, is that the Panasonic TS1 shoots 720p in the AVCHD format, where the Canon only does 640×480 VGA vids. The TS1 video recording mode isn’t the most polished—there’s a good two to three second delay from when you hit the dedicated video button to when recording actually starts and stops, and it’s unclear exactly when everything does start, but if you’re OK with that, the HD video mode is awesome. I mean, underwater HD in such a tiny package—that’s a no-brainer right? I would kill to have some HD clips of my friends and I swimming around in crazy schools of neon fish in Egypt.

Here are some sample clips from the sink:

TS1 720P Clip:

Note: There is a current bug with the TS1 that makes video imported into iMovie ’08 and ’09 play at double speed. I had to do some conversion to avoid this, which is a pain. Panasonic says they’re working with Apple on this to include a fix in future versions of iMovie.

Canon D10 VGA Clip:

Keep in mind that the AVCHD format is kind of annoying, in that you might have to install special codecs and import video straight into your video editing software of choice and then export it in friendlier formats, rather than just grabbing an AVI or MOV clip from the memory card and uploading it to YouTube.

And yeah, the quality of these videos is pretty bad, but the difference in the actual output is clear: 720p underwater rules.

Shooting
Both cameras are 12-megapixels, for full-res shots at 4000×3000. Both have the same size CCD sensor, but the TS1’s ISO goes up to 6400 where the Canon D10’s only to 1600. I didn’t do a thorough sensitivity test with either camera, but I would imagine you don’t want to go much higher than 800 on either one, so the difference is probably fairly moot.

A difference that does matter is the TS1’s wider-angle lens: it’s a 28mm-128mm f/3.3-f/5.9 effective focal length zoom, compared to the D10’s 35mm-105mm f/2.8-f/4.9.

As you can see, color reproduction via the TS1’s Leica lens is far better than the D10s, which has to fight through a bit more protective plastic. Also, the TS1 tends to autofocus underwater with much greater ease—important, because you won’t always be able to look at the LCD when composing shots while snorkeling.

Conclusion
Like I said, I only played with these cameras in the sink, so I didn’t push their waterproof capabilities to their max. But having a waterproof and shockproof camera around the house is kind of cool in its own right—imagine taking bath time photos of your kid without having to worry about getting the camera wet, or taking shots with dirty hands while you’re barbecuing, or anything like that. You can always dunk these cameras underwater to clean them off. It’s nice. You don’t have to be a snorkeler to use them and have fun with them.

Which is why for me, the balance shifts heavily toward the Panasonic TS1. Its form factor makes using it on land a lot more convenient, and the added HD video option is a huge plus. And my ears hurt if I go down much further than three meters underwater anyway. At a premium of only $70 ($400 list vs. $330 for the D10), I’d say it’s well worth spending up for.

Panasonic Lumix DSC-TS1
HD video capture

Unobtrusive form factor good for both land and sea

28mm wide-angle lens

Buttons perhaps more difficult to use underwater

Only waterproof up to 3 meters

Canon PowerShot D10
Super-rugged body waterproof up to 10 meters

Big, simple buttons and LCD icons

Only shoots video at 640×480

Very bulky